Pink and grey hot for 2018
You gotta love the names of paint colours. With thousands of them out there, white, pink, blue, red, green, grey, yellow, orange and purple simply don’t cut it as accurate descriptors. So, Benjamin Moore Paints’ trending colours for 2018 have a cornucopia of extravagant monikers.
For instance, try Opulence or Dreamy Cloud if you need the latest shades of white.
Pink is desirable this year, but don’t call it such, ask for Pleasant or Texas Rose.
Grey is all the rage now at home, for the office and in public spaces. And, of course, plain old grey will never do. So check out the swatches for Coastal Path, Picnic Basket, Excalibur, Porch Swing, Urban Sophisticate, Smoked Oyster, Sharkskin, Carolina Grill, Elk Horn, Moonshine and Silver Marlin.
To explain all this, Toronto-based Benjamin Moore colour expert Sharon Grech recently came to Kelowna for a wine-and-cheese reception with interior designers, painters and developers at the Okanagan Centre for Innovation.
“The newest paint colours take their inspiration from everywhere – art, fashion, architecture and nature,” said Grech, who also makes regular appearances on Cityline TV as a decor guru.
“The new pinks actually came from Art Basel in Miami where the rose spectrum was really in and fashion, which is seeing a 1980s-style pink and peach comeback. It’s not hot pink, that’s cliche. But a more neutral pink that’s degenderized so it appeals to everyone. It’s really an evolution of red.”
Grey has become the “it” colour because it’s so crisp, versatile and pleasing to the eye.
It can be the main event or the perfect backdrop to bold and colourful accents.
“I repaint my house every year as the new collections come out to give everything a try,” said Grech.
“So, my living room is currently Urban Sophisticate from the Colour Stories Collection. The ceiling in my dining room is the darker grey-blue-green Porch Swing and my home office is the lighter grey-blue-green Picnic Basket.”
Yeti partnership
You also gotta love the names of these two businesses that just became partners.
Kelowna-based cartoon maker Yeti Farm Creative and Los Angeles-and-Vancouver-based global sales and development firm Surprise Bag are working together.
Surprise Bag can help Yeti sell its two-and-threedimensional animation series worldwide and provide financial advice.
It will start with wider distribution for Yeti’s series Sweet Tweets, Kick Flip, Schnarg and Me, Myself and My Selfie.
The two companies will also jointly acquire, develop and produce new cartoons and co-productions.
The union could mean 200 new jobs at Yeti’s studio in Kelowna as the two companies pull in more animation work for Yeti, both for Yeti-specific projects and animation services for other companies and studios. Yeti also has a co-production deal with Nelvana to create the DNAce animated series for Teletoon.
Tourism engagement
Thompson Okanagan Tourism Association CEO Glenn Mandziuk will be part of the new process the provincial government uses to develop tourism policy and strategy and implement programs.
Mandziuk is vice-chair of the Minister’s Tourism Engagement Council named after Tourism Arts and Culture Minister Lisa Beare. Sheila Bouman of viaSport is chair. “This council brings a fresh approach to tourism industry discussions in B.C., drawing on expertise from a wide range of sectors, across all tourism regions of the province, and giving arts, culture and sports a greater voice,” said Beare.
The goal of the council is to foster stainable tourism growth.
The 28 members represent small and large tourism businesses, marketing organizations, culture and sports groups, Indigenous communities, municipalities, technology companies and wilderness guides.
They come from all six of B.C.’s tourism regions – Thompson Okanagan, Vancouver Coast and Mountains, Vancouver Island, Cariboo Chilcotin Coast, Kootenay Rockies and Northern B.C.
Sole KLO
Sole KLO is proving to be as popular as its sibling mixed-used buldings, Sole Kelowna and Sole Downtown.
The six-storey projects feature commercial space on the bottom three floors and smaller, affordable condominiums on the top three storeys.
Sole Kelowna and Sole Downtown, within two blocks of each other on St. Paul Street, are complete and fully occupied.
Sole KLO, so named because it will be at 1083 KLO Rd. near Okanagan College, is currently selling units before construction starts.
In just one week, half of the 40 condos have been spoken for. The majority of the homes are priced under $250,000. “We are seeing more and more buyers in the market who want to live that small-footprint lifestyle without the heavy mortgage load,” said developer Kevin Edgecombe of Edgecombe Builders.
Nominate for biz excellence
You have until June 29 to nominate deserving businesses and leaders for the 31st annual Kelowna Business Excellence Awards.
The Kelowna Chamber of Commerce-hosted awards sees trophies handed out in a dozen categories.
They are: rising star (for a business less than three years old), micro business, small business, mid-sized business, large business, young entrepreneur, not-for-profit excellence, social leadership in a for-profit, marketing campaign of the year, arts and entertainment achievement, technology innovator and business leader of the year. Fill out the nomination form at KelownaChamber.org. Judges will sort through nominations to come up with a list of finalists to be released late summer and winners will be announced at a banquet during October’s Small Business Month.